Recently in the field of digital cameras, those with an upper cover, which can freely be opened or closed, born on a basic body of the camera and also a monitor such as an LCD buried in the upper cover have been introduced into the market and popularized among users.
In relation to electronic equipment such as digital cameras having the construction as described above, for instance, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 7-23259 discloses the "Electronic Camera" which incorporates a monitor, detects whether the upper cover has been opened or closed, and changes contents of a display on the monitor according to a result of the detection. In this case, a power switch is provided on a side surface of a basic body of the camera.
Also Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 8-139981 discloses the "Video Camera" which is a video camera having a monitor with the upper cover capable of being freely opened or closed, and in which the monitor is rotated and stopped at a position where an operator can easily check the display when replaying image information.
By the way, in a portable type of electronic equipment such as a digital camera, generally a battery is used as a power supply source, and it is essential to suppress power consumption of the electronic equipment in applications requiring long time use of the equipment:.
However, in the conventional technology, a power switch is provided on the side surface of the basic body of a camera or on the upper cover and generally provides ON/OFF control to the power supply source according to an intentional operation by a user, so that power may wastefully be consumed because of user's careless mistakes such as forgetting to turn OFF the power supply source or the like.
Also in the conventional technology, when the mechanism such as manual macro is selected for image pickup, the mechanism is kept switched on until the next image pickup is operated unless the user resets the manual macro, so that the user images without realizing the state of the mechanism, which causes imaging mistakes to occur.